Hammerdal and a 5-day Weekend

Almost dark and off the back but not feeling too bad about it Friday night (Boedi's photo)

I knew it was going to be a complicated week. A nephew and his family were scheduled to arrive at the house on July 4th. My brother and sister-in-law were coming a day or two later. Another niece and her family would also be arriving for the weekend. So lots of family that included small children pretty much guaranteed trips to the zoo, aquarium, and insectarium, plus big get-togethers for meals.

None of them had checked with me beforehand about my bike racing plans which were now, of course, very much up in the air. Dustin was putting on the Hammerdal Criterium series starting Friday night which included criteriums on Saturday and Sunday mornings. I'd been feeling increasingly desperate to inject more intensity into what masquerades as my "training program." After missing a lot of weekend riding due to officiating responsibilities I was starting to feel pretty badly out of shape, both mentally and physically, and I knew the only thing that could start to pull me out of that hole would be some actual races that didn't involve jumping on the bike minutes before the start after having been officiating the earlier races. So first, I decided to take Thursday and Friday off from work. I figured I could probably slip over to Hammond, just about an hour's drive away, on Friday night without being too unsociable. Saturday, however, was another question altogether so I put that race tentatively off the table unless the gods smiled on me, which they didn't. Sunday morning everyone was scheduled to be heading back to Orlando or Austin or Jackson, so I figured I could make those races.

Thursday turned out to be a marathon that started with a walk down to the start of the St. Charles Avenue streetcar line. After the long ride down to Canal Street, we hit the Audubon Insectarium, followed by the Aquarium, followed by lunch, and then the streetcar ride back home. I was tired by the end of that day.

Lunch at Satsuma on Maple St.

Friday was busy as well, but since I had to bring a bunch of the LAMBRA equipment to the Friday night race, I had to be on the road around mid-late afternoon. That didn't turn out to be much of a problem, so I loaded up the car and got to Zemurray Park in plenty of time to unload and help get the finish line set up. The oddly named race (Hammerdal is a town in Sweden from which one of the city's founders, Peter of Hammerdal, came from) was held at a nice local park with a winding 1 km road around a little lagoon. As such, it wasn't really quite a criterium since there wasn't anything resembling a corner on the whole thing, but the sweeping curves around the lagoon proved to be sufficient to cause a few crashes anyway. Friday's events included just a Cat. 4/5 race and a Cat. 1/2/3/4 race, with a fixed-gear race in-between. With the Cat. 1/2/3/4 race not starting until after 7:45 pm, it was going to be dark by the time the 1-hour race was over. For the really old guys with cloudy eyes like me, that just added another layer of concern on top of the multiple cash primes that would make it hard to hang onto the back.

Jim was bloody mess after his crash, but showed up and raced Saturday and Sunday, placing 5th and 6th, anyway.

Despite getting a reasonable amount of time to warm up, this race didn't go well for me, but I knew teammates Jim Booth and Chris Brown would probably do fine. When they announced a Prime on the first lap, I knew I was in trouble. As expected, the race started out like it had been shot out of a cannon, with the first lap averaging 28 mph despite having started from a standing start. It didn't slow down much after that, either, with attacks and primes coming one after the other. Halfway through the second lap I was already coming off the back, and I wasn't alone. I got together with Butch, who not coincidentally is my age, picking up one or two others over the next few laps. We were about 20 minutes into the 60 minute race when we heard the lead motor coming up behind us. Fortunately the officials hadn't pulled us, so we jumped onto the back of the pack when it came by. That lasted seven or eight laps until there was a big long surge and we were popped off the back yet again. By then it was pretty dark, so it was probably just as well. Meanwhile, a break had gotten off the front. When they came around and lapped me (again) I jumped onto the back for a few wonderfully smooth and fast laps while they pulled me back up to the pack that they then lapped themselves. I hung with the pack for a little while, but was soon off the back again, getting pulled in time to help the officials with the lap cards and bell. Somewhat disappointing, but not all that unexpected. Two laps before the finish we heard that there had been a crash on the back side of the course. A couple of minutes after the finish Jim Booth came riding up looking like he had been dragged through a cheese grater. It looked worse than it was, but it was visually impressive nonetheless. He's gotten caught on the outside of one of those fast sweeping curves and ran out of asphalt when the rider ahead drifted wide. Meanwhile, Chris placed 7th, which was impressive since there was a two or three-man break off the front.

The obligatory snoball stop

Saturday was Zoo day, followed by lunch at New Orleans Hamburger and Seafood, and then snoballs at Panola, and then a lot more food with everyone over at the house where I perhaps drank a little too much wine for someone who was planning on getting up at 5:30 am to race. Sunday's races started at 8 am with the Masters race and ended with the Cat. 1/2/3 race at 10:30. I was planning to leave around 5:45 am. James, my nephew, was planning to head out with his family for Austin around 5:30. Things were going on schedule until he discovered his car wouldn't start. So we jumped it from mine in the dark and got him on the road, although I was giving him only about a 20% chance of getting back to Texas without having to buy a new battery (he did indeed have to get a new battery en route).

These races went somewhat better, which is to say I didn't get dropped. Since that was basically my main goal, I was pretty satisfied with it. The Masters race was considerably slower than the Friday night race had been, although I was very much in survival mode near the back for most of it, finishing mid-pack well behind a small breakaway. The 1/2/3 race was actually a lot of fun even if my game plan was basically to follow wheels at the back. There were a lot of attacks, but fortunately for me there was also some omnium points team strategies playing out that resulted in periodic lulls. Of course a few riders got off the front, but the resulting team considerations kept the pace in the pack kind of under control. Right after seeing the 2-to-go lap card, the motor passed us and the pack was lapped by the leader, which meant that we were unexpectedly on our finish lap. I guess only about a third of the riders realized that because there wasn't really much of a sprint. Still, I felt good about how I was feeling after riding two races that morning, so I'm logging it as a successful weekend even if it isn't reflected in my placings. After my race I rushed to the car, put the bike on the roof, and rushed back to collect up the camera, tripod, a ton of traffic cones, the race clock, and anything else that would be needed for the upcoming Wednesday races and Team Time Trial. I was rushing because I needed to get to Audubon Zoo for a Tulane event at 2 pm. Somehow I made it, although I have to admit I was pretty wasted by then. At least there was a lot of food and wine and snoballs!

Up in Tupelo

Easy officiating with small fields

A 5-hour drive, a new race with a new promoter, painfully low pre-registrations, unfamiliar officials, and a sketchy plan to both officiate and race. Typical weekend nowadays, it seems. I was just south of Hattiesburg when I looked up to see a very impressive wall cloud between me and Tupelo. Well, no road trip is complete without at least one stretch of white-knuckle driving, right? A few minutes later I drove right into the storm, wipers on high, staring at the red tail lights of the truck ahead of me. When I saw an exit, it took it. Since I wasn't in a hurry, there was no reason not to wait it out. Half an hour later the sky was clearing and wall cloud had been replaced by a rainbow. Mixed messages.

The other half of the 40+ race

Saturday morning I left the hotel around 5:30 or so, drove down to the local Starbucks for coffee, and headed back to set up the finish line. By then it was raining and the radar looked bad. Really bad. I met up with Jeffrey and Morris, both officials from Tennessee who I had run into someplace before, and we got the tent and camera and everything set up. Half an hour before the first race was supposed to start the rain went from bad to worse. Looking at the radar, we decided to delay everything by an hour and combine some of the races in order to make up the time. Since turnout was extremely low for most of those races, combining races wasn't going to be much of a problem. The first few races went off just fine and we were pretty close to being back on schedule, more or less. Then, with just a couple of races left, the computer running the finish camera suddenly froze up. I restarted it and was greeted with a message indicating that it couldn't find a boot drive. Not good. It wasn't until much later when we were packing up to leave, that I discovered that the laptop had been sitting in a slightly low spot on the table, so pretty much all of the rain that was getting blown onto the table had accumulated immediately underneath the laptop, more specifically underneath the hard drive. It was dead. Anyway, by the time the last couple of races went off the weather was much improved and we were even able to put down an actual finish line. That evening I got the link from Ricky for the software and downloaded a copy to my personal laptop that I had been using for registration and results. It seemed to work at the hotel but I was a little cautious about it because it's pretty flaky software that uses an Ethernet port and can be affected by things like anti-virus software.

Sunday's weather was looking to be hot and dry. They were using a different course in the same general vicinity with the start/finish directly in front of the hotel parking lot. We got set up early and thanks to there being no rain, everything started right on time. After the first couple of races, I pulled the bike out of the car, rode one lap of the course, and lined up at the back of the 6-rider 40+ group. This switching from official to racer thing never goes well, so from the start I was just in it for the exercise. For some reason the race started out really slowly, which was nice since it allowed me to at least get a little warmed up. After a couple of easy laps there were a couple of attacks. I came off the back after one of them, but they slowed down and I rolled back up to them. It wasn't long before another attack and I found myself in-between a 3-rider group ahead and two riders behind. I probably could have dug deep and gotten onto the break but I guess I was a little short of both motivation and power, so I waited for the two behind me. We rode a number of laps together, but one of the guys had two teammates in the break and understandable didn't seem willing to work much. Our pace slowed down again, so I went ahead and took a pull, fully expecting him to launch an attack, which he did. I didn't even try to get on them as they flew past me, and just rode out the remaining five or six laps.

Back at the official's tent, things were going fine until, at some point in the middle of the Cat. 1/2/3 race, the camera software refused to allow me to record images. I have not idea why, but fortunately the finish was easy to judge by eye. Anyway, other than the low turnout the races went off pretty well. Even with all of the rain on Saturday, there wasn't a single crash all weekend. I loaded the software onto my old laptop and will give it a try at the Wednesday night criterium after I disable the anti-virus software. Hope it works.

This afternoon we drove up to Baton Rouge to watch them demolish Candy's family house on Harrell's Ferry Road. I guess it took about 45 minutes for one guy to turn it into a pile of rubble. Hopefully, that will help them sell the property.

Giro Here Mnats There

Rui - blast from the past on the Giro

Last weekend was basically a mental recovery weekend for me. I rode the Giro both Saturday and Sunday. I rode out to Starbucks Saturday morning later than usual. That was because I knew that the Starbucks was closed for renovations. I had gone ahead and made coffee at home since there's really no place around there that is open early enough anyway.

So it was around 6:30, I guess, when a car pulled up alongside me on Carrollton Avenue and I heard someone yell, "Randy?"  I looked over to see Rui Ponte, who I don't guess I've seen in person since some time in the mid-80s. He said, "I'll see you at the lakefront!" Rui graduated from Tulane in Architecture and lives in D.C. where he is quite active in the local cycling community. At one point while he was at Tulane he worked on the design of a velodrome.

That's Rui on the front row next to Brian Roberts
some time in the 80s at the Tour de La

As continued my ride out there I wondered how many people knew that the place was closed. I also wondered if people would think that there wouldn't be a Giro Ride because of it. As it turned out, we had pretty much the usual crowd, meeting up in the neutral ground parking area across from Starbucks. We picked up Rui and a number of others along Lakeshore Drive. It was warm and the wind was essentially calm. The group was a little slow to get going, and the pace didn't get particularly fast until we were halfway down Hayne Blvd. It turned out to be a particularly steady ride, thanks no doubt to the lack of wind. When VJ flatted on the way back somewhere on Hayne, most of the group was still together.

Stephanie with hardware and coach Jed

Sunday's Giro was an entirely different story, however. Although the wind was again almost nonexistent, it seemed like only three or four people were willing to do any work at the front. That made for fairly slow and erratic speeds for most of the ride. On the way back, when we turned onto Hayne, I casually rolled off the front at some moderate low-20s speed and ended up probably a couple of minutes ahead of the lackadaisical group. Go figure.

Meanwhile, up in Augusta GA, Masters Nationals was going on. We had just a handful of riders who went, but a couple of them had pretty good results. Peter Reed was 2nd in the 40-44 Time Trial. Stephanie Smith was 2nd in the TT, 2nd in the Crit, and 3rd in the RR in the 35-39 age group. And of course there was Debbie Milne, who is in NC now, although we still claim her. She won the Road Race and was 6th in the Crit in the 45-49 age group. The GeriAtrix guys, Tom Bain and George Heagerty, from Texas, also did well in the 65-69 age group. Tom won the Road Race and was second in both the TT and Crit. George was 4th in the Crit.

On Tuesday I went out to the regular levee ride. The sky was overcast and there was just a touch of rain showing up on radar. Perhaps that was one reason that everyone except Rich and I turned back early. Rich had just gotten back after the unexpected death of his daughter. We didn't talk about it - just traded long steady pulls. We got barely a few raindrops here and there; hardly enough to notice. Even so, it was a lot more time on the front than usual, and so I definitely felt like I'd gotten my money's worth out of the ride by the time I got home.

Tour de La Number 47

Start of the Cat 1/2/3 Tour de La Criterium, June 10

Well, the dust has about settled on this year's iteration of the Tour de Louisiane stage race and by all accounts things went pretty well. The volunteer list kind of came down to the wire as usual, and there were the typical loose ends to tie up the week before the race, but in all it was definitely a success. We had 127 entries this year, which was just slightly more than last year. Still a long way from the 200+ we had around 2009, but my sense is that turnouts have kind of bottomed out in the last year or two and are starting a very slow rebound.

So around Monday before the Tour I realized that I didn't know who had made the police arrangements for the Time Trial. Turned out nobody had! Fortunately, Fred Schroeder was able to get that in place quickly, which was a relief. On Sunday before the race I got Candy to make the copies of the race bible, and then spent an hour or so assembling and stapling. As usual, most of then pre-registrations didn't start coming in until the last couple of days, so it wasn't until Friday that I felt like entry fees would at least cover the prizelist. I had decided to take Friday off from work, so that gave me a lot of time to print out the waivers, organized numbers, and ultimately load everything into the car for the trip across the Causeway. We decided not to do the Friday night registration this year since turnout for that has been pretty low in recent years. I guess we don't get as many riders from far away as we used to, so a lot of the riders are driving in on Saturday morning or arriving late Friday night. Anyway, I didn't head across the Causeway until around 6:30 pm. We had made arrangements for a couple of double rooms at the Holiday Inn Express for the officials, but when I arrived they didn't have any reservations. After a few phone calls the guy who Mignon had made the arrangements with appeared and realized he had never actually booked the rooms. All their double rooms were booked by then, so we ended up with three single rooms, which actually worked out fine since only two of the motorefs needed rooms on Friday night, and only one on Saturday night and Ricky was driving directly to the start on Saturday morning. The road races went really smoothly with only one minor single-rider crash that I know of. We got the results sorted out at the hotel, printed out the TT start sheets and Road Race results, and before I knew it, it was time to head over to the Lakeshore High School to get ready for the 5:30 pm Time Trials. Robin was already there and had already put up the signage, so once the police arrived we set up the start tents, put out the traffic cones, and got things started right on time. The TT results looked good, so after I got back to the hotel I got those posted pretty quickly and the other two officials and I walked over to Copeland's for dinner. It had been a long and hot day, but I was glad it hadn't rained and that nobody had to call 911.

I was up again at 5 am for the Covington criterium, having allowed a little extra time to put up the new USAC snowfence and to give Robin, Fred, and the other volunteers time to put out the bales of wood chippings that we were using instead of hay bales, which were apparently both expensive and in short supply this year. As usual, there were a few cars parked on the course, so things were held up between the first race (just the juniors, so small) and second race while a tow truck removed a couple of cars that had been strategically parked on the outside of corners, including the final one. The rest of the criterium went fine until it was time to line  up the Cat. 1/2/3s. At that point the sun was still out and everything looked good unless you checked the radar. There was a big thunderstorm brewing and heading our way. We started the 1/2/3s right on time, and as the clock ticked down from the 1 hour mark we were keeping one eye on the weather. By the mid-point of their race you could see the big dark clouds approaching. It looked like the worst of it would pass just north of town, but it didn't look like we would escape the rain. Sure enough, with maybe ten or twelve laps left the thunder and lightning and rain started. Once the street got wet, someone over-cooked a corner, slipped on a paint stripe, and took out a bunch of riders. At that point it was pouring down rain and riders started coming into the pit from all directions. There had been a 2-rider break with 10 seconds on the field, but now the field was shattered. With all of the thunder and lightning and confusion we made a quick call to stop the race and re-start ten minutes later when the worst of it would be past. So we called everyone back to the line with 5 laps to go, started the breakaway, and then started the field. A number of riders at that point were content to take it easy and just finish upright, but at any rate we got things finished in a light drizzle, posted the results in a hurry having forgotten that one rider had previously lapped the field, re-posted the correct results, and got the podium ceremonies done. Then we stuffed a ton of wet tents, banners, snowfence and equipment into the car for the drive home where I threw the snowfence and flags and tent tops into the dryer and set everything else out to dry in the basement with the fan blowing on them. Then I posted the final results to the website and sent them to Robert to upload to USAC.

I was still feeling kind of dragged out for the next couple of days, mostly from sleep deprivation I guess, but eventually got back into the routine over the next week or so, riding just the Giro Rides on the weekend and the usual training rides during the week. This afternoon is the first of the Wednesday evening races on Lakeshore Drive, so I'm going to try and get out of here a few minutes early so I can set up the finish camera and help with scoring before jumping into the 1/2/3 race myself. This morning's WeMoRi was uncharacteristically easy, so I guess a few of those regulars are planning on doing the evening race. Then this weekend I am heading up to Tupelo to officiate/race/deliver equipment, for which I have not yet made any arrangements. Registrations for that are frighteningly low right now, so I hope things pick up soon!

Reconnaissance Ride

The Tour road course has some really nice sections and even a bit of shade. This definitely isn't central Texas.

With the 47th annual Tour de Louisiane festivities looming just a week away, it was time for a trip up to the road race course at Stoney Point. I had been kind of dreading the task of riding from one intersection to another with road-marking paint in my bottle cage instead of water, stopping, painting, waddling up the road a bit farther in cycling shoes, painting again, etc., etc., so I was quite happy when Robin texted me that he'd gone ahead and spend a day freshening up the turn markings, sweeping the corners and patching a few of the patchable road surface problems. The TDL road course is an hour and a half drive from home, and although the original plan was for an 8 am start, most of the guys had subsequently decided to arrive early enough to ride an extra 16-mile lap beforehand. On the one hand, that was appealing because it would be a bit cooler. On the other hand, that would mean a very early wake-up call. I was kind of on the fence about it until Mignon texted suggesting we drive up together rather than needlessly burn all that extra gas, so I compromised. We timed it so that we'd get there while the early group was still out on the course, ride backwards until we met them, stop again at Stoney Point for 8 am to see who else showed up, and then take off on some undetermined number of additional laps, which, as it always turns out to be, is one less than originally planned. The Tour de La road course is best described as "death by a thousand cuts." There are really only a couple of places that you could legitimately call climbs, but on the other hand there are essentially no places that you could call flat. It can be very deceiving, with the difficulty of each succeeding lap seemingly increasing exponentially.

Anyway, the early group had gotten a late start so as we were getting ready to go we saw them come sprinting up the road, finishing their first lap. It was still well before 8 am, so we rode with them for a few miles into their second lap and then turned around to get back to the start by 8 to pick up any others. Then we rode backwards on the course and met them about a third of a lap around. For the most part, the pace was moderate and mostly everyone stayed together, which was good. The road surface on this course is about 90% good, 5% OK, and 5% pinch-flat territory where sections of asphalt overlay have broken out, leaving nice sharp inch-high cracks (for lack of a better word). It looked only marginally worse than last year. I ended up with only 47 miles, but when Mignon asked if we were doing another lap I wimped out. Everyone else was ready to head home. I probably would have done another lap if most of the group was doing it too, but it was getting pretty hot and I was feeling pretty tired, so I decided to call it a day.

Right now it's Wednesday afternoon. The forecast for the weekend is looking pretty good, although of course there's always the chance of a thunder storm popping up at random this time of year. A 20% chance of rain Saturday and Sunday with highs of around 90 is about the best one can hope for this time of year, so I'll take it for sure. Other than volunteer assignments and recruiting, most of the key arrangement for the races are pretty well nailed down, so that's good. Online registrations are at 50, which is OK for the Wednesday afternoon before a race weekend, not that I wouldn't like it to be closer to 70. Lots of work to do tonight since I kind of took yesterday evening "off" from Tour de La stuff. I felt like I needed a break.

Feliciana Road Race

Thursday on the levee after the turnaround

Last weekend already seems like it was a long time ago (it's Thursday), but I figured I should log something about last Sunday's Feliciana Road Race while I can still separate it from all of the other times I've ridden that course. The much-hyped tropical depression Alberto did what I was expecting it to do, which was to track more and more toward the east. The net result for us was that we had some relatively dry air and mostly clear skies for Sunday's annual Feliciana Road Race up in St. Francisville. There was a pretty good turnout for the race, a bit over 100 riders, which made for a decent field of 14 for the Masters race. For this one Acadiana had four riders and 601 Racing/Velovit, which is what was C-spire last year and was once Palmer and before that Herring (when they weren't so old), also had four riders. I was the lone NOBC representative. VJ, Mike Corcoran, Hamrick and a few others filled out the rest of the field. Having done this race a number of times I pretty much knew what would happen on the first lap. From the start I rode at the front for the first mile or two to turn #1 where I knew one of the Acadiana guys would attack. He did. I followed with great effort. He looked back, realized he wasn't going to go clear, so eased up so his teammate could counter-attack, which I also expected but by then wasn't in a very good position to do anything about. Fortunately that counter, which pulled away one or to others, was quickly chased down and things came back together. We were probably no more than six miles into the race. We were still on that same stretch of road when VJ and a couple others just kind of rode off the front. Frankly, I was at the back when that happened and don't really know the details there, but at any rate they weren't pulling away very fast.

As we approached the left turn onto Highway 10, I looked over at Woody and told him I was expecting an attack at the turn. Well, that didn't quite happen, but a little while later a gap opened up, various people went to the front, and next thing I knew there was a group in-between the break and the remnant of the pack that included both Woody and Frank. This was not good. As we headed north, still only maybe 12 miles into the 66 mile race, I could see that group slowly closing in on the little break. My group, however, wasn't really chasing at all even though it wouldn't have taken much of a group effort to get us all back into the race. I swear, this happens every year on this course. A mile or two later I saw the two groups come together and fan out across the road, so I knew they had slowed down. It was a prime opportunity for our group to close the gap, which at the time couldn't have been more than 40 seconds, but no such effort was made. Once the road curved back to the west and the front group got to the hillier part of the course the front group started racing again and by the end of the first lap they were essentially out of sight. Woody told me later that Frank had started pushing the pace and they had gone through the feed zone at something like 28 mph. I guess we were left racing for about 7th place at that point, so my motivation was lagging. Up at the front, though, Woody and Alex broke away, I think shortly before the turn onto Highway 10, and started putting time into that group. Meanwhile, back in the grupetto, not much was happening. Halfway through the second lap VJ came back to our group, and then around the end of that lap we saw Alex on the side of the road holding his flatted wheel in the air. Although I didn't know it at the time, that left Woody out there on his own with a 22 mile lap to finish ahead of the pack, which he ultimately did. Our little group was going slowly enough by then that Alex caught  up to us after getting a wheel change. Toward the end of the final lap I figured I'd better put in a sprint in order to keep up appearances. There's a decent little climb about a mile from the finish, and of course we went fairly hard up it. That kind of strung things out but I think it mostly came back together before the final kilometer. At that point, though, I wasn't looking back. We came around the last bend about 500 meters from the finish fairly slowly with me maybe third or fourth wheel, behind Butch who I knew would sprint. Finally, right at the 200 meter flag, Butch jumped. I was barely able to stay in his draft from there to the finish, so that gave me an unimpressive 7th place, or equally unimpressive 4th in the 55+ geriatric age group. I guess I was riding too defensively that day because I never felt like I'd made any really huge efforts. Sometimes, missing that break that you know you should have been in kind of takes all the wind out of your sails.

So the weather around here has just been getting hotter and hotter this week. On the plus side, I'm not seeing any major bad weather through the Tour de Louisiane weekend of June 9-10, which is good. I still have a lot of stuff to take of before that race weekend, but most of it seems to be coming together in its usual last-minute fashion typical of anything being organized by a bunch of volunteers with real jobs. Last Monday was Memorial Day, which meant I was off from work. There were multiple people proposing various of Memorial Day rides, which led to some confusion, but eventually I decided I was going to do a ride on the levee out to the Spillway with Pat and Mignon and whoever might show up along the way. My legs were a little bit tired from the prior day's racing, so I didn't want to go for the Holiday Giro Ride option anyway.

Meanwhile, at work I've had a little free time to start learning the new content management system, Drupal, that Tulane is using. I have to move, or really completely re-create, our departmental website under the new system, so I have been slowly working on that. Then I discovered that the Tulane Cycling website, had disappeared. That was because Student Activities, which housed it, switched over to Drupal and just kind of abandoned it without telling anyone. So I got authorization to rebuild that site as well and decided it would be a good simple site to learn the ins and outs of Drupal with before tackling our regular departmental site. So I spent most of yesterday doing that and got it pretty much wrapped up early this morning. I think that I'll dive into the departmental site head-first tomorrow now that I have at least a little bit of experience. 

First Named

Its name is Alberto

The "tropical disturbance" in the Gulf finally graduated to a "subtropical storm" and thereby acquired a name - the first of this hurricane season. As seems to always be the case, the long-range consensus storm track has it aimed squarely at New Orleans, which at this point practically guarantees it won't hit here. On the plus side, it doesn't look like much but a continuation of the scattered random thunderstorms we've been having lately, at least through Sunday, so I think the road race in St. Francisville this weekend should be OK, albeit perhaps a little wet, or not. It's still too early to bank on much other than the fact that some significant weather is moving generally north out of the Gulf of Mexico and should get here around Monday.

Trying to take a photo while riding, over my shoulder

Earlier in the week I'd thought for sure that my morning ride would be rained out at least one day, and probably two, but although there was rain here and there, the morning rides weren't really affected unless you count the guys who stayed in bed on Thursday because they could hear thunder.  I heard it too, around 5:30 am, and of course checked the weather radar immediately. There were some big thunderstorms around, but the weren't moving much at all. One of them was just barely skirting the southern-most section of the morning levee ride, but just barely, or not quite, or something like that. I decided to go out anyway because I was assuming there would be rain on Friday morning (there wasn't). When I got to the levee there were a couple of guys there, so we headed out, picking up Woody. As soon as the pace picked up we lost David who is still slowly recovering from a crash, and then one of the others turned back at the pipes, leaving just Woody and me. That put us into a kind of mild 2-man time trial mode, with Woody taking longer pulls and me shorter ones. Out around River Ridge we saw a coyote standing in the middle of the bike path ahead of us. Naturally he ran down the levee when we got close, watching us carefully as if trying to figure out if we were suitable for breakfast. Then, out at The Dip there were a few roseate spoonbills mixed in with the white egrets who have been hanging around a little pool of water that has been slowly drying up since the river went back down to normal levels. It's pretty rare to see any of those along the levee.

Somewhere out around Destrehan we saw the other Dave go by in the opposite direction on his TT bike. After turning around we continued trading pulls into a steadily increasing headwind. It was a long time before we caught up to Dave, who the got into the paceline with us. For some reason I was really starting to fade toward the end of the ride and got home pretty tired.

The Preseason

Early morning clouds - may be getting a jump on hurricane season this year

Hurricane season around here doesn't officially start until June 1, and even then we don't generally see much until late July. It seems that this year, however, we'll have a little pre-season action starting this week. Although it's looking like the little disturbance down in the Gulf will be nowhere close to hurricane strength, and probably not even up to tropical storm levels, we may be seeing a bit more rain than normal, at least through the weekend. Hopefully it won't have much of an impact on the road race scheduled for Sunday up in St. Francisville. In fact, the weather is likely to be better there than here. This morning up on the levee I could see some big clouds building up - the kind you usually don't see until later in the day. The 6 am levee rides are now starting with enough daylight to make blinky lights unnecessary, and although I know it won't last much longer, the air still feels pretty comfortable for the first half hour or so until the sun gets farther above the horizon. Today we started out with, I think, four, but picked up four more along the way, then one turned back early, then on the return trip we picked up Scott. There was practically no wind at all, so the pace was smooth and steady at a comfortable 22-25 mph for the most part. I was a little surprised to be feeling my quads so much toward the ends of my pulls since Sunday's ride was an easy one and Monday's easier yet. Go figure. Old legs take a long time to recover, I guess. Anyway, the forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday is looking pretty normal, but for Friday through Monday they're putting the rain chances at 80%. It's still way too early to put much faith in that, however, and I'd say there's a decent chance that riding and racing won't be affected significantly. We'll see.

Acadiana Action

Early in the race, coming into the u-turn

Last weekend's Vuelta d' Acadiana criterium over in Lafayette went well. This event has morphed over the years from a traditional 2-day stage race to just a road race and criterium to, this year, just a criterium. I always like the road race, so I was a little disappointed that it couldn't happen this year, but it was still worth the 2.5 hour drive for the criterium. The crit course and I have a kind of love-hate relationship. On the plus side, it features a left-hand U-turn followed by a right-hand corner and moderate uphill to the next left. I really like that part because the U-turn keeps the speeds down a bit and requires some skills that I apparently have. Coming out of the U-turn requires some acceleration and it immediately followed by a little climb, both of which tend to benefit the smaller guys a bit. On the minus side, the other half of the course can get pretty fast, which means gaps open up, and the finish straight after the last turn is just a tad longer than I can usually handle well. The end result is that a small break usually gets away without me, and then I struggle to finish in the top 3 or 4 in the pack sprint.

I drove up early since I had most of the necessary LAMBRA equipment in my basement, arriving with plenty of time to help set up. The first race wasn't until 11:15 am, so I didn't even have to get up early. The first race, which was a combined Women/Junior race, also didn't happen. I don't really know why, but only one Junior and one Woman showed up for that one. Go figure. Granted, there was a lot going on that weekend, including a big mountain bike race in Brookhaven, a festival in New Orleans, and some rather early summer temperatures.

As the Cat. 5 race started to wind down, I went over to the car to get my act together for the 1:00 pm Master-40 race. I was expecting this race to be pretty fast and wasn't getting my hopes up, but at least I was feeling like I was in reasonable shape for it considering it would be my first real race of the year. Like most of the races lately, turnout was a little below what wheelsuckers like me would prefer, but I knew I'd get a workout anyway. As I'd been expecting, the race started out with a bunch of attacks and counter-attacks. My teammate Jim Booth was up near the front and put in a ton of work closing down a bunch of the resulting gaps, but with the smallish field I knew that eventually we'd run out of workhorses up there and something would get away. We were probably about half way into the race when two, and then three riders opened a gap. At the time I was practically at the back and so I don't really know exactly how it all transpired, but as we approached the U-turn, I saw the trio already on the other side and heard Woody yell across the neutral ground to his teammate Frank, "go! I knew that would be the race, and it was. Jim and a couple others made an effort for a few laps, but the gap went out really quickly and most of the rest of the bunch seemed uninterested in chasing. Even so, I was surprised that the break didn't but more distance on the pack by the end.

So with four or five laps to go I started pushing my way into what looked like a 3-man Acadiana leadout that was forming up near the front. With two laps to go I was hovering around 3rd wheel, about where I wanted to be, and was looking forward the the pack sprint since I hadn't actually done on in a long time. So we're coming up to the U-turn just after the start of the bell lap and I'm in a good position behind two or three of the Acadiana guys, expecting things to explode right after the turn. Just as we enter the U-turn the rider in front of me suddenly slows down dramatically. As I found out later, his chain had skipped. Anyway, I had to touch the brakes and it put me on the outside, which is where I really didn't want to be at that point. By the time I took the long way around and got going again two riders, I think, had gone past me and there was already big gap to three riders. I pushed it up the hill, but kind of blew up, ending up a few wheels back. So I think the situation with half a lap to go was that there was the original 3-man break with Bronson, Frank and Todd from Texas way up the road sprinting it out for the top places, then Woody, Kevin and I think Alex with a solid gap on the rest of us. That was a really disappointing development and I was already losing my motivation since it was clear we'd be sprinting for, at best, 6th place. Anyway, I dove through the last turn, hitting a bump that launched my rear wheel a foot or two, and stood on the pedals. Right before the finish I eased up a bit and one or two of the guys went past me. On the plus side, when I looked at my Garmin data later that evening I was kind of pleased to see that my heart rate had hit 187, which is about as high as it's ever gotten in the past couple of years since I've been using a heart rate monitor. So, other than the U-turn complication on the last lap I felt like I had an OK race. If things had gone a little differently on the last lap I think I would have placed a little better, but as they say, "live by the sprint, die by the sprint."  

The pack sprint showing the gap that happened on the last lap - we're so far back we're not even in focus!

The rest of the races went pretty well, although I wisely decided not to enter the 1/2/3 race. That one was been pretty fast and thanks to that and the heat there were a number of surprising DNFs. They had a fixed gear criterium and also an unknown distance criterium after the Cat. 1/2/3 race, so by the time we tore everything down and I grabbed something to eat and hit the road it was after 7 pm. Thankfully Waze rerouted me around major traffic jam just outside of Baton Rouge, so I got home around 9:30, I think. I'd forgotten to take the results file with me, so I stayed up until 10:30 or so until Ricky emailed it to me after he got home to Monroe. It was almost midnight before I finally got to bed.

The weather toward the end of next week is already looking rather uncertain. There's a little disturbance in the Gulf that will be bringing a higher than normal chance of rain all week and through the weekend. Next weekend's race is the Feliciana Road Race over in St. Francisville that I'll be riding. A little rain won't be much of a problem for that one, and the chances of rain will probably be lower there than in New Orleans anyway.

Thursday on the Levee

Regrouping after the turnaround

It felt pretty warm, but I knew it wasn't really summer because there wasn't sweat dripping off of Ray's shoes with every pedal stroke ... yet. We had a good-sized group on Thursday morning, unlike Tuesday that for some reason was practically just Rich and me. We are finally at that time of year when there are no wardrobe decisions to make. All that matters is how much water to bring and how far down your jersey zipper will go.

Today there was a west northwest breeze that seemed to be keeping the speed down a bit on the way out. Since I'm planning on racing on Saturday, and my legs have felt kind of achy all week, I'd already decided to take it easy this morning. That meant short pulls and careful drafting and low gears. I kind of worked, I guess. As we passed the playground on the way out I heard someone call out and, looking around, saw Keith down in the parking lot with his bike in pieces, changing a flat. He told us to just go on and he'd catch us later on the return trip. Woody and Jeff were doing most of the work keeping the pace up, although it would kind of sag a bit when one of them wasn't on the front. I was trying to maintain the speed, but was taking much shorter pulls. It was good to see that the part of the bike path around the green pipes that had been under re-construction recently was open this morning. That was nice, but I feel a little worried about how quickly it was done. I guess we'll know pretty soon if the road is going to crumble again.

After the turnaround we picked up a bit of a tailwind pretty much all the way back that had the speeds into the upper 20s, even at the same effort levels we'd had on the way out when we were going more like 22. I think the wind was increasing the whole ride. Anyway, we hadn't gotten very far from the turnaround when we came upon Keith standing on the side of the road with another flat. Someone gave him a tube and I gave him a CO2. He had a big slash in the tire that he booted with something like an energy bar wrapper and then put maybe 50 psi into the tube to keep it from blowing through. He made it all the way back, so that worked out pretty well.

We are starting to get things together for the Tour de La on June 9-10. We really need to find some sponsorship this year. At the moment, we don't have anything nailed down in that regard other than the team sponsorship from Apolline, and we're still having trouble getting a response from the church where we always have the road race. I have a meeting next week with Covington to get the criterium arrangements set up. That should be easy since we will be doing everything just like last year.

Cluster Flats and Time Trials

NOBC riders warming up for the Time Trial

Last weekend was the annual LAMBRA Time Trial Championship that the club hosted over near LaPlace. That particular road, La-51, has been used for time trials for 40 years or so since it's easy to get to, dead flat, offers some protection from the wind, has a fairly nice road surface, and can be essentially closed to traffic without causing much of a problem to anyone. As usual, online registrations for the TT, which are required, started sluggishly with most people waiting until the last 24 hours to finally pull the trigger. Situation normal. I think we ended up with slightly over 100 riders, which was similar to last year.

Cluster Flats on the Giro Ride Saturday

Since I knew I'd be officiating rather than riding on Sunday, I was glad to see a good-sized group for the Giro Ride on Saturday. The weather around here has been pretty stable lately, which is to say we haven't had any significant rain for a couple of weeks. The temperature has, naturally, been rising as we tilt toward the sun, and we've already nudged up against the low 90s. Fortunately, the early morning temperatures have remained relatively comfortable...so far. As I sat around outside Starbucks Saturday morning, chatting with the local riders and waiting for the 7 am roll-out, Phil mentioned that he'd already had a flat that morning as he was riding over the river on the Huey P. Long bridge.

Screwed on Chef Menteur

I didn't think any more about it until he had another flat on Hayne Blvd. A number of people stopped with him, so the front part of the group that I was in decided to go ahead and continue. We'd all regroup at the turnaround anyway. I was happy with that because I needed the exercise and knew I wouldn't be getting any on Sunday. So we had a good fast ride out to Venetian Isles where everyone came back together for the trip back. I guess we were about halfway back on Chef when Phil flatted again. This time I stopped as most of the group continued. I figured he was probably going to need a tube and CO2 since he'd already flatted once. Well, it was more than that. The first tube we put in failed immediately. There was a pretty good cut in the tire that we booted with a piece of candy wrapper or something we found on the side of the road. We went over that tire with a magnifying glass and couldn't find anything in it, so we tried again and finally got rolling. Well, that didn't last long. Since we'd already taken so long fixing flats, and the guys who had stopped, besides me, were all planning on riding back across the river with Phil, we decided to just take Chef Menteur back into town rather than head out to Lakeshore Drive. Sure enough, a few miles later Phil's tire went flat again. I think we went through four or five tubes and countless CO2 cartridges, blowing the O-ring out of my inflator along the way, before we got him going again. Another couple of miles along the debris-strewn bike lane and I start hearing the whap-whap-whap of something stuck in someone's tire. This time it was a sheetrock screw that had impaled Mike's tire and carbon rim. We unscrewed that and pulled out our last remaining tubes and CO2 cartridges and started up again. Moments later, Phil's tire went flat again. He ended up having to call for extraction somewhere around Dillard University. Not a good day for tires.

Three seconds.....

Sunday morning I was out the door before dawn to meet up with our awesome crew of volunteers for the Time Trial. The weather was pretty nice, although the moderate north wind would be making it hard for the riders on their way out to the turnaround. With 102 or so riders to start, and a couple of 5-minute gaps between the 10 km, 20 km, and 40 km groups, it was almost 10:00 before we sent the final rider out onto the course. By then all of the riders doing the shorter distances had finished, so I immediately began working on the results. Everything went pretty smoothly except for three of the earlier riders that had finished close together and through some miscommunication at the finish line, we didn't know which rider went with which finish time. It took a while to track them down, but thanks to their personal computers and the process of elimination we got those figured out.

Although we didn't have any new records for the Men, Stephanie Smith broke her own LAMBRA and course record and set a new Women's 40 km record of 56:44, which was pretty impressive and not done under ideal conditions, given the wind. So the Time Trial was a pretty good success all-around. I headed home and spend a couple of hours posting results and completing the post-event report, etc. and probably should have gotten on the bike for a ride but, well, I didn't.

This week the weather for riding has been nice. On Wednesday I went out to the WeMoRi a little early and got ahead of the group. I rode all the way down Lakeshore Drive to the Seabrook loop, and then all the way back to Marconi before they finally came up from behind. I put in a few good efforts on Wednesday, and perhaps that's why I felt pretty flat on Thursday morning for the long levee ride. The first time I went to the front to take a pull my legs loaded up after about 25 pedal strokes and I knew it wasn't going to be a good day. This morning I went out for a really slow recover ride, so I hope that gives my old legs enough time to get back to normal before the weekend.

Thursday morning on the levee

Tonight I'm hosting a little end-of-season party for the Tulane riders. There's at the end of exams right now and I guess a few will be missing, but we're expecting eight or nine. I went out after work yesterday and got some stuff to make hamburgers and pasta salad, so hopefully I'll be able to get home a little early this afternoon to get that all together.

Finally Like Summertime

I love Strava's Flyby animation. This is the end of this morning's WeMoRi.

Looks like the 50s are finally gone from the long-range forecast and soon enough I'll be lugging around two full water bottles instead of one. I might even drink most of the water. It's such a relief to get out of bed in the morning and not have to have the internal debate over base layers and arm-warmers and gloves and vests and socks. Just grab a pair of shorts and a jersey and go. Of course, it's not really hot yet, and the early morning rides right now start out cool and comfortable. Hope it lasts a little longer.

With nice weather and little wind, there were a lot of survivors at the end of the Saturday Giro Ride last week.

So the training rides for the past week or so have been pretty routine. The weather has been quite nice, there are more and more riders on the road, and a nice string of area races are rapidly approaching. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, they recently began tearing up the levee bike path where it goes around the green "pump to the lake" pipes. That little bypass was a pretty spectacular engineering fiasco (assuming there was actually any engineering involved at all, which is questionable). They created it in record time less maybe a year and a half ago and almost immediately it began to crumble under the weight of the police SUVs and whatever other "official" vehicles were driving up and down the path. Eventually they came and did some asphalt patchwork, which held up for practically no time at all.

About to tear up the asphalt and try again.

By spring there was a narrow 6" line that we'd navigate, in the dark, to avoid the holes and mud and broken asphalt. It was down to about 3" a week ago when we finally saw some signs that they were preparing to fix it, again. A couple of days ago they closed it off and completely removed the road surface. We can only hope that they think this through this time and put something there that will hold up. In the meantime it's not too difficult to drop down to River Road and then climb back up on the existing access roads, so it could be worse. The real question is whether the work will take two weeks or six months.

Last weekend I rode both the Saturday and Sunday Giro Rides. It's Jazz Fest season around here, so there are always a few people who don't show up or leave early. Priorities, you know. The group was a good size both days anyway, and I thought that Saturday's ride was particularly fast. We were back onto Lakeshore Drive before 9 am, so maybe five to ten minutes earlier than average. Sunday also had its moments, but like Saturday the wind was light so it was easy for people to stay with the group even when the pace heated up.

Lots of people, not a lot of staff.

Candy is leaving for a conference in New York on Friday morning and so yesterday she decided to go down to the local DMV to get her "Real ID" driver's license since hers expires about now. I figured I'd go with her and get mine at the same time. Mine doesn't expire until November, so this would just basically swap my existing license for the new version until I renew for real later in the year. So we collected up the required documentation - social security cards, birth certificates, two bills showing your name and home address, etc., and headed over there from work around 11:30 or so. There were over 100 people sitting in the room full of plastic chairs -- waiting. Of the 25 desks lining the periphery of the room, only three or four were staffed. Two long hours later, they finally called her number, followed immediately by mine. Well, they wouldn't give her the license because her social security card, which I would estimate to be 50-60 years old, had been laminated. Really? Luckily she has a valid passport, because she wouldn't be able to get on the airplane in New York without it. My own transaction went fine and I had a freshly minted driver's license with the little star in the corner within ten minutes.

This year we lost a couple of LAMBRA races, and I had been worried about the big mid-summer lull in the season, but fortunately the Semi-tough guys stepped up and will be putting on a 4-race weekday series on the Lakefront. Also, Dustin and 4D will be putting on a 3-criterium weekend in July right over in Hammond on a fairly non-technical course in the local park. Hopefully I'll be able to make most of those. In the meantime, though, I'm focused on putting on the Time Trial Championships this coming Sunday, and then the Tour de Louisiane a few weeks later. After that, we have the Vuelta over in Alexandria that is just a criterium this year, followed by the Feliciana Road Race the following weekend. There's supposed to be a road race in Jackson the next weekend but I haven't seen any details on that one yet.  It looks like the TT is in good shape. The weather forecast is good, a number of people have volunteered to help, and Eddie is providing enough sponsorship cash to pay for most of the police detail. I'll be spending some time Friday night and Saturday morning setting up the start list and preparing event waivers and bib numbers, and then once again packing a ton of stuff into the Volvo early Sunday morning for the short trip over to the Swamp Tour place near LaPlace. Hoping everything goes smoothly despite not having Robin or Mignon on hand this year.

Tag-along

A rainy and desolate TT start for the SCCCC championship weekend. This was actually better weather than I'd expected.

The weather when we headed out from New Orleans last Friday morning was beautiful. The forecast for Wichita Falls for Saturday was ugly. Situation normal for a collegiate race weekend, I guess. I drove the "early van" with Gavin and Kaitlyn, starting our 10-hour trip around 9:30 or so. I'd brought my bike in hopes of getting in some miles during the Sunday morning road races, on the assumption that the cold front would have moved through by then.

The drive went pretty smoothly, at least until Dallas where it never goes smoothly. Somewhere in the Interstate spaghetti that is the Dallas highway system we came to a halt. Waze had alerted us just moments before and had already plotted a somewhat circuitous bypass to get us around the traffic jam that I assume had been caused by a crash somewhere up the road. That was interesting, and pretty soon we were tooling down the interstate again at the speed limit, plus or minus 5 mph. We got to the hotel after dark - I guess around 7:30 or so - and ended up eating a rather unappetizing dinner at a Denny's near the hotel. The forecast for Saturday was looking no better than it had the day before.

Kaitlyn was off the front from the start despite the wet streets

Saturday morning I was up early looking at the radar, which was really unnecessary since a glance out the window at the rain told me everything I needed to know. It would be very wet for the morning time trial. We were out the door by 6:30 or so, headed for what used to be one of the local bike shops and was now just an empty used-to-be bike shop where they were doing registration. They had already sent out a preliminary start list but promised a complete one after registration. Arriving at the start location maybe 20 minutes before the start, we were practically alone. The only clue that something might be happening was a solitary yellow portable toilet sitting in the triangle formed by the intersecting roads. We sat in the car with the heater running and watched the light rain. I was actually looking better than I'd expected. Obviously the roads would be wet, but the rain was pretty light. Eventually the officials arrived. As seems to be standard practice at Texas time trials, the start list, if there had ever been one, got tossed out the window and one of the officials was basically calling for "anyone" to come to the start line. While this kind of random start list can work OK, it does tend to open the door to mistakes when compiling the results. On the plus side, it meant that our four riders would be able to start earlier rather than later, which would minimize the amount of time I'd be hanging around in the rain.

The second row was a bad place to start for Gavin

The criterium was scheduled for 4 pm, which was just about the time the rain was supposed to be ending. First up was the combined Men C, Women B race with Kaitlyn. They were using a shortened course on campus because of some construction and a baseball game, but at least the road surface was fairly good concrete. Nonetheless, the group rounded the first corner at almost walking speed. By the second lap Kaitlyn was already rolling off the front. She would stay out there in time trial mode for the rest of the race. There was a small chase group that hovered anywhere from ten to twenty seconds behind her, but somehow they never got it together enough to catch, so she won. Gavin was up next in the Men's B race where his relative inexperience had him starting a little too far back. There was already a break by the time they were halfway around the first lap and Gavin was stuck in the second group which was showing no signs at all of chasing. He eventually realized that he could ride solo faster than the group and rolled off the front, but it was too little, too late. In the Men's A race, Elliott, who had upgraded to Cat. A the week before, was off the back right away, and Grayson ended up off the back as well, so that was a little disappointing. On the plus side, by the time the A race was underway the roads were pretty dry except for some puddles on the corners (of course), and there were bits of blue sky showing up. I ended up helping our with video of the Prime and finish sprints, and handling the lap cards.

Grayson went for, and got, the hole shot in the crit, but blew up dramatically later on.

The weather Sunday morning for the road races was beautiful, but cold. It had dropped down into the upper 40s overnight, but with the clear sky I knew it would warm up nicely. As always, it was windy. They don't call it the Vuelta de Viento for nothing. I got the OK to tag along behind the Men's B / Women's A race, which was scheduled for two laps of the course. This is always a frustrating way to ride, but I figured it would be more interesting than riding solo in the wind with nothing to look at but the featureless Texas prairie. Somewhere up near the front of the pack was Gavin. The only opportunity on the whole loop for a breakaway was on the one significant hill, which also happened to be on a long headwind stretch. Sure enough, that's where the group split with Gavin and a few others going up the road, and then the main pack splitting again before the turn onto the crosswind stretch. I was tagging along on the back to make sure I didn't do anything to affect the race, so watching these splits and not doing anything about it was difficult. For most of the rest of that first lap the little group I was with made an effort, however disorganized, to chase. At one point it looked like there was a chance they would regain the main pack, but just as they got close the gap started to open again and all the wind went out of their sails. Anyway, once the gap became clearly insurmountable I took a couple of pulls to help out a bit. Gavin ended up coming in 3rd, so that was good, and Kaitlyn was 2nd in her race, although there were only two Women B riders. Since the weather was so nice, and I was so in need of some miles, I decided to do an additional lap when the B group split off from the main loop for the short spur back to the finish line. I figured there would be some A riders somewhere around, but as it turned out I never saw any and ended up as probably the last person back to the cars. Kaitlyn called me at one point to see where the hell I was. Both Grayson and Elliott had quit a lap early from the A race after being dropped, which was disappointing. At any rate, I was happy to have gotten in 60-something miles, even if they weren't quite at race pace.

Gavin ended up 3rd in a photo-finish. More photos from
Brooks Bixler at http://brooksbixler.zenfolio.com/f90425403

The nice thing about having all of the road races in the morning was that we were able to hit the road for home right after lunch, and got back to New Orleans around 10 pm. I think this was the first year where I never had to drive through a terrifying rainstorm and/or arrive back home after midnight. The Tulane team is pretty much done for the year now since classes end next week. Now I'm concentrating on the Time Trial Championship that the NOBC is hosting in a little over a week, plus the 47th Annual Tour de Louisiane that we're hosting the first week of June.

Meanwhile, I've been logging both commuting and training miles this month as part of the Bike Easy Challenge where I'm unintentionally leading the straight mileage individual ranking with Elliott right behind me and Grayson in 6th place. If Tulane would get its act together rather than spreading itself out among no fewer than 21 separate "organizations" they'd be blowing away all of the other "Organizations." As it is, the "Tulane University" organization that I created is in 4th place behind the "Tulane Graduate Students." If you add up all of the Tulane organizations, they have accumulated amost 50,000 points. The current leading large organization is Ochsner Baptist with only 13,816 points. The Tulane Library has over 11,000 points all by itself.

Another weekend forecast

Saturday morning in Wichita Falls

The past few days around here have been pretty nice with morning temperatures in the upper 50s or lower 60 and not too much wind. I wish it would last, but it won't. There was a chance I'd get lucky and sidestep it all since I'll be driving over to Wichita Falls on Friday with the Tulane team for their conference road championship at Midwestern State. No such luck, though. The current forecast is calling for it to start raining before sunrise and to continue until early afternoon, at best. The silver lining to that cloud, though, is that the first event is the time trial and the criterium isn't until 4:00 pm. So while there's currently zero chance that it won't be raining for the time trial, there's at least some hope that it will be over by the time the criteriums start. The other good thing is that it should be clear and dry for the long 10-hour drive over there. Sunday, it should be better, which is to say it will be dry, cold,and as it always is in Wichita Falls, windy as hell. Hence the race title, "Vuelta de Viento." If the only rain is for the time trial, I'll be thrilled.

Meanwhile, back on the home front, the same line of rain that will be in Wichita Falls on Saturday morning is scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on Sunday morning during the Harbor Master Criterium. Hopefully the event won't be essentially rained out due to the weather or low participation or both. Ordinarily, I'd be planning on racing and officiating there. This year Ricky won't be able to make it down from Monroe to officiate, so we've assembled an officiating crew of three that will hopefully be able to pull it off. It was really messy last year because of big fields and some finish camera issues. This year there will be just the one linescan camera that we used for the Tulane race, and if it's dark and overcast, it might not be particularly helpful since it really struggles when it's dark. The other night I decided to set it up with the LAMBRA laptop at home so I could write up detailed step-by-step instructions for the officials. That went fine until it didn't. The LAMBRA laptop is almost never connected to the internet. It runs Windows 7 and probably hasn't seen an update in a few years. A couple of years ago I had it at home and connected it in order to download some software for the radios. Well, while I was writing up the setup instructions, it prompted me to update the RapidCam software that runs the camera, so I did. Of course, something went south in that process and then the software wouldn't run at all. I eventually found an earlier install of the software buried in the downloads archive folder (who knew there was such a thing). Luckily, that worked. At least I hope it worked. It's hard to really tell until you actually set it up on the side of the road with enough light for the camera. Guess they'll find out on Sunday. A couple of people are coming over to the house tonight for a quick lesson on setting it up, because the process of creating a new race with the software is anything but intuitive, not to mention the three adjustments that have to be made on the camera itself to account for ambient light, focus, and zoom. I'm hoping I can get up really early tomorrow in order to get in a short ride before picking up the van at 9 am and hitting the road. I guess I'll bring the bike and hope for a chance to do some riding around the road course on Sunday while the races are going on.

Hanging out at Z'otz after an easy Monday morning recovery ride. Could be worse.

Anyway, as I was saying earlier, it hasn't been a bad week for riding, and for the most part I've been feeling pretty good on the morning group rides. Yesterday I woke up a little early for the WeMoRi and got to Lakeshore Drive well ahead of the group. I decided to ride in the same direction the group goes, on the assumption I'd be caught fairly quickly, but as it turned out I was still about a mile ahead of them going around the Seabrook loop at the east end of Lakeshore Drive and didn't get caught until I was off of Lakeshore Drive and onto Marconi. For a change, there wasn't a break off the front, so I got a chance to ease my heart rate up into training ride territory relatively gradually. I was all set to contest the sprint to the top of the Wisner Overpass when, just as we came up to Harrison Avenue, where we had a red light, someone yelled "car." Naturally, half the group then sprinted across the intersection. I was behind Brian Baum who grabbed two full handfulls of brake, however, and was lucky not to crash into him. Later, I heard there was also a police car at the intersection. Only in New Orleans can a group of cyclists race around stopped cars to run a red light right in front of a police car and suffer no consequences. Anyway, I was feeling pretty good on Wednesday and got on to the NOBC leadout train at the end as Chris, who unfortunately is moving to Baton Rouge, took a long fast pull to launch Andrew across the finish.

This morning we had a fairly big group for the Thursday levee ride. It seemed like the wind was picking up the whole time, though, and since it had a pretty substantial crosswind component there wasn't much draft at the back. Fortunately we had a steady paceline going, so you were at the back for only a few minutes before you moved up far enough to get a little draft. The temperature was in the low 60s, though, so it was actually fairly nice. I am getting kind of tired of dodging all of the long-neglected roadwork problems on my little two-mile ride back home, though. There are two places along Carrollton where there's water leaking out of the asphalt from some broken pipe. I usually try to go around those in the traffic lane, since the bike lane there is now a big wet mess. Then, right after turning onto Spruce, I have to negotiate the gaping and ever-deepening hole that's been there for over two weeks since they repaired a water leak that had been there for months. I guess they think that putting a traffic cone in the middle of the road solves the problem.